9 April 2017 _________________________________________________________________________ Elena Ruehr and Gretchen Henderson Crafting the Bonds An American Lyric Opera in Two Acts Piano Vocal Score for June 11, 2017 Reading _________________________________________________________________________ [T]he music tightened and deepened, apprehension began to beat the air ... They were not about anything very new ... keeping it new ... in order to find new ways to make us listen. ~ James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues” (1957) Words work as release … What will be needed, what goes unfelt, unsaid—what has been duplicated, redacted here, redacted there, altered to hide or disguise—words encoding the bodies they cover. And despite everything the body remains. ~ Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (2015) I will not bind myself. ~ Hannah Bond, The Bondwoman’s Narrative (c. 1858) CHARACTERS and VOCAL REGISTERS The Author (Alive and Dead) Soprano The Teacher/The Librarian Alto The Abolishionist/The Historian Baritone The Slave Trader/The Chancellor [or TBA*] Bass The Mistress/The Activist Alto Mrs. Master/The Bookseller/The Cleaner Soprano The Master/The Manuscript Auctioneer Tenor Slaves/Citizens SATB Chorus Schoolgirls Sopranos and Altos from the Chorus – as many as 3–4 per part SETTINGS (in chronological order) Slave Auction (VA c. 1840s, NC c. 1854) Plantation (VA c. 1840s, NC c. 1850s) Nation’s Capital (DC c. 1856, c. 1960s) Home Attic (NJ c. 1859) Bookshop (NY 1948) Librarian’s Study (DC c. 1980s) Manuscript Auction (NY 2001) Historian’s Study (MA c. 2002) Publics (varied locations, including MO, and eras up to present*) STAGING The opera is meant to be adaptable for different settings and budgets with either very minimal or more involved staging. Given the overlap between past and present, a scrim might allow for shadow play where the outlines of bodies grow and blur with branches. Black/white projections (at times tinted red) might contrast then blur, as present moves past then moves back toward the present. Another possibility might involve enlarged silhouettes akin to the 19th-century tradition of portraiture, subverted in the vein of Kara Walker’s artworks, also echoing words by Zora Neale Hurston (referenced in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric): “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” If more literal interpretations are preferred, there might be large hanging empty frames like portraits in the novel’s Lindendale Plantation, filled with singers’ bodies (who come in and out of the frames) or that shift over the course of the opera (from images of white slave masters to African American literary/artistic “masters”). Or, the projections might include images of Bond’s manuscript and period maps, or more contemporary media (whether photographs by Carrie Mae Weems, or art/film by John Lucas, or dancing by Camille A. Brown—any number of possibilities). Talk with librettist for more ideas. * The opera’s ending is flexible so it can be localized. It should involve community members. SCENES CHARACTERS SETTING Act I 1. History in Action Slave Trader, MS Auctioneer, Auctions: Slave and MS Historian, Citizens/Slaves c. 1840s and 2001 Bass, Tenor, Baritone, Chorus 2. On Whose Shoulders We Stand Historian, Librarian, Bookseller Historian’s Study Baritone, Alto, Soprano (Trio) 2002 back to 1948 3. Time is Relative (I) Citizens/Slaves Plantation in VA Chorus c. 1940s back to 1840s 4. The Dead Have Something to Say Slaves Southern Plantation Chorus c.1840s 5. The Heart Must Have Something to Love Author, Teacher Edge of Plantation Soprano, Alto (Duet) c. 1840s 6. So the Story Grows (I) Teacher, Slaves Southern Plantation Alto, Chorus c. early 1850s 7. You’re in the Secret Slave Trader (with Mistress) Southern Plantation Bass (Solo) c. early 1850s 8. Crafting the Bonds Author, Schoolgirls Plantation Library Soprano, Chorus (S/A only) c. early 1850s 9. Can We Pass? Author, Mistress, Citizens/Slaves 19th-century rural edge and Soprano, Alto, Chorus 21st-century urban edge Act II 1. Don’t Get Trapped Slave Trader (with Author, Master) Slave Auction Bass (Solo) c. 1854 2. In The Nation’s Captial Master, Mrs. Master, Author, Citizens/Slaves Nation’s Capital Tenor, Soprano, Soprano, Chorus c. 1856 3. A Race to Outrun Race Author, Abolitionist, Slaves Southern Plantation (NC) Soprano, Baritone, Chorus c. 1857 4. So the Story Grows (II) Abolitionist Underground Railroad Baritone (Solo) c. 1857 5. What to Leave Behind? Author Home Attic in the North Soprano (Solo) c. 1859 6. Time is Relative (II) Slaves then Citizens Nation’s Captial Chorus c. 1860s ahead to 1960s 7. The Dead Was Exchanged for the Living Librarian, Historian, Bookseller Librarian’s Study Alto, Baritone, Soprano, Chorus c. 1980s ahead to Present 8. Undo the Bonds Author, Activist, Chancellor [or TBA*], Citizens Streets/Campus [TBA*] Soprano, Alto, Bass, Chorus 2015 [Present*] 9. The Heart Must Love Cleaner, Protestors (Chorus humming offstage) Streets/Campus [*] Alto 2015 [*] * The opera’s ending is flexible so it can be localized, depending on where it is produced. ARGUMENT In 2001, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. purchased a handwritten holograph manuscript at auction titled “The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts, a Fugitive Slave, Recently Escaped from North Carolina” and proceeded to verify it as the earliest known novel written by an African American woman. The author’s identity was not confirmed until 2013 when Gregg Hecimovich verified her as Hannah Bond. Written in the 1850s but unpublished until 2002, The Bondwoman’s Narrative has a fascinating afterlife as a “fugitive author/fugitive text” (as described by Augusta Rohrbach). The novel blends nineteenth-century literary styles, ranging from sentimental and gothic genres to slave narratives, among other period influences, even lifting sections from novels by Charles Dickens and other writers but placed in the context of the American South before the Civil War. The novel survived primarily thanks to efforts by Dorothy Porter Wesley, a bibliographer and librarian at Howard University, who bought the manuscript in 1948 from a manuscript and autograph dealer in New York named Emily Driscoll. Years later Porter Wesley mentioned the import of the manuscript to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. After her death when her collection was dispersed for auction, Gates saw the item in a Swann Gallery catalogue, bid on it and authenticated it. He dedicated both the published edition and published holograph to her: “In memory of Dorothy Porter Wesley, 1905-1995 on whose shoulders we stand.” The opera Crafting the Bonds is not an adaptation of the novel and instead draws out elements from the narrative to weave them into the larger story around the story, the many people who have become part of its recovery, and its ancestral origins and afterlife. Beyond the librarian who finds the manuscript in a bookseller’s shop, an auctioneer who sells it, and the scholars who have situated its larger history, the story has deeper roots in American history and the transatlantic slave trade whose effects continue to be felt. The opera starts in the present, moves backward in time, and returns to the present, at times blurring past and present to reflect elements of the African diaspora, which as Paul Gilroy writes “work within an aesthetic and political framework which demands that they ceaselessly reconstruct their own histories, folding back on themselves time and again to celebrate and validate the simple, unassailable fact of their survival.” The opera’s interracial backdrop questions the legacies of slavery and freedom, personal and national narratives, and civil rights in the twenty-first century. “Bond,” as a word, was used frequently in 19th-century parlance (bondage, bondman’s, bondwoman’s, etc.), so the Author hid her name in plain sight in her novel’s title. The opera engages the word’s many meanings, as her book to some degree comes to stand in for her body. Her name is Bond, and as an enslaved person, she is a bondwoman. Hoping to bind hearts, her story appeals to “a generous public.” Her manuscript is bound, but the binding is broken. She chose not to publish her book in order to remain free, so both literally and figuratively, her story became unbound: published almost 150 years after it was written, living an afterlife as the body of her book was sold again. Following Hannah Bond’s lead, navigating the border between fact and fiction, the opera juxtaposes past and present by utilizing archetypal names like The Author, The Librarian, The Historian, The Master, etc. The opening scene juxtaposes auctions—a 19th-century slave auction where The Author is sold, and the 21st-century archival auction where The Historian buys the manuscript—before leaping into a story about crafted bonds. Born as a slave in Virginia but later sold to John Hill Wheeler (a plantation owner in North Carolina and once ambassador of Nicaragua, whose work at times brought his family to Washington, D.C.), Bond was well-read and incorporated her reading into the fabric of her narrative. As a house slave, she had access to Wheeler’s extensive library and life beyond the plantation. Aural dimensions of her factual story speak to larger ways that cultural stories entwine. At the plantation, for instance, girls from a nearby school boarded and followed a curriculum that required them to recite passages of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, which Bond likely overheard and adapted for her novel. One of Wheeler’s nephews was an abolitionist believed to have assisted her escape. As the opera follows a fugitive Author rather than merely adapting her novel, past and present blur. When the Author helps the Mistress escape (since she is being blackmailed by the Slave Trader for passing as white), the Chorus of Slaves and Citizens follows their journey on the Underground Railroad, singing “Isn’t that your son? Isn’t that your daughter?” to echo the question asked of Michael Brown’s mother in Ferguson, Missouri, when someone held up an iPhone with a photo of his dead body.